Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#701

Post by honkdaddy » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 12:52 PM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #612

endymi0n wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's spot on from the advice. I'll add that OP — Your biggest issue seems to be extremely high intelligence, paired with a lack of empathy and social functioning, which created a self-expectation of massive grandiosity. But you keep failing to deliver on it because you can't get your highly powered brain on the streets, leading in self-pity and depression. Not good, but salvageable. How do I know? My life story rea…

Sorry, but I think you're reading way too much in the OP. Their account is compatible with their biggest issue being "extremelly high intelligence" coupled with a lack of empathy, but it's also compatible with ordinary intelligence coupled with some bad choices- and the chances are that the latter is the right explanation ("extremely high intelligence" should only be the case very, very rarely, by definition [1]). I…

I think with any kind of crowd-sourced-internet-therapy like the OP is currently receiving, you're right, no one answering is going to be able to accurately understand and relate to the OP. That being said, if 50 kind people like /u/endymi0n share their own parsing of the situation and offer some advice, maybe 1 in those 50 is actually the advice OP needed, and their life could be positively affected.

The alternative, I guess, is that everyone correctly realizes they can't understand the full context of OP's position, and no one gives OP any advice and they continue down the road they're currently on. Just my view :)

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#702

Post by devoutsalsa » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 1:02 PM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #630

devoutsalsa wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was massively broke for a long time, and I can speak to my experience in the USA. I was over 200K USD in debt at one point. [1] I was behind on everything, and then declared bankruptcy. The only time I would have needed to worry about it was if I wanted to get a securities license (e.g. become a financial advisor), or if I needed a security clearance (e.g. work on top secret project). The real risk I faced was the…

> Just 5 years ago I was making 6000 USD per month and with almost 250K in debt, and ~50% I really don’t know what it’s like in other places, but the first few years of a mortgage are like this, but with a larger debt. It’s grim.

Yeah, that does sound hard. I’ve never had a mortgage myself, but the thought of owing tons of money on an underwater mortgage is not appealing is not appealing.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#703

Post by mohap2 » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 1:03 PM UTC

A lot of the orgs you mentioned are top-tier and they interview A LOT of candidates and they reject almost all of them.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#704

Post by honkdaddy » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 1:03 PM UTC

dotBen wrote: post #515

JamesDeepDown wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'll give you mock 30 minute interview (I've hired countless engineers, designers, PMs and other roles in the last 20+ years)" This is an incredibly generous offer and I hope it gets done, because it would BY FAR the most valuable thing that the OP needs.

I spent almost 2hrs with snakedoctor this evening. He's a smart young man who just needs some pointers and advice as he doesn't really have anyone around him who has experience of landing and keeping a job in tech.

What a wonderful thing to do. WP Engine is great, by the way!

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#705

Post by jeltz » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 1:03 PM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #522

jart wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good comment with the right instinct but for the wrong reasons. The biggest red flag is struggling with personal finance. You can't get jobs like the ones he wants if you live beyond your means and constantly land in hot water with money because people who are like that are at risk of turning to evil to make ends meet.

What jobs inquire about your financial history? That seems a little dystopian. Can't get a handle on your finances because you don't have a steady job, better not give them a steady job!

Only jobs which require security clearance and jobs where you handle s lot of money as far as I know. So for a software developer there are plenty of opportunities where they won't check your personal finances.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#706

Post by marcus_holmes » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 1:04 PM UTC

Network. It's never about what you know, always about who you know. Everyone likes to pretend it's a techy meritocracy, but it totally isn't. There isn't a dev shop on the planet that hires purely on technical skill and ignores all the social factors.

The valid method of bypassing the contact whitelist is to have someone who works at the company (or knows the hiring manager socially) recommend you.

Turn up to meetups, tech events, anything where the people you want to work with hang out. Make friends. Buy a few beers. Volunteer for stuff.

If you're an introvert and don't do this easily then try contributing to a FOSS project and getting invited into their comms channels. Again, make friends.

Sorry, this sucks I know. But it's how humans are.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#707

Post by zelon88 » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 1:05 PM UTC

jart wrote: post #584

atoav wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your advice is "just stop being poor"?

It's a question of living within your means. A guy who's fortunate enough to have an engineering job at EA and IBM shouldn't be having personal financial problems, if we consider that many of the immigrants who make his food live comfortably enough to afford sending half their income back to old country. There's a way to live responsibly in any situation and if you can't then you have room for improvement.

Comfortable?

I remember 15 years ago working in fast food. Many, many of the employees do exactly this. But it isn't comfortable. I worked with a brother-sister pair from Brazil. They lived together, worked two jobs each 70 hours per week (Dunkin Donuts, McDs, and a hotel between the two of them), lived in a shit apartment with no cable, and still only sent a couple hundred bucks back to Brazil every month. The sister was around 50 years old.

With that money their family was able to afford a house in Brazil.

You sound very presumptuous. I challenge you to find someone you're describing who works in America to support overseas family and ask them how "comfortable" their living situation is.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#708

Post by jldl805 » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 1:08 PM UTC

p0sixlang wrote: post #586

jldl805 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a recruiter and candidates argue 95% of the time. Maybe higher. I only give feedback in very, very selective situations and even then I almost always regret it due to the response. Most people are not calm, rational, dispassionate receptors of critical feedback... especially when there is money and ego at stake.

Who do you recruit for? I'm soon to be a new grad, looking for a job, and if you reject me.. you could literally berate me for things I didn't actually do and I wouldn't find it appropriate or productive to argue with you about it. Let's set up an interview, you can record my reaction to the rejection and send it to those who argue for reference on how not to be a moron.

I don't recruit new grads so it would never happen. Similar to OP's post, it's almost always a situation where it's painfully obvious to everyone else involved why the person isn't getting hired, but it would be awkward or a waste of time to try to tell the person.

It's also virtually always social skill related... if you weren't up to the task technically, you wouldn't have been asked to interview. The in person interview is normally to decide "do I want to see this person 40+ hours a week for the next 5 years" rather than "can they do the job."

Lots of exceptions obviously but mostly true across the board.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#709

Post by gen220 » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 1:16 PM UTC

wespiser_2018 wrote: post #662

gen220 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the NYC area, the ones I can personally vouch for, having worked with graduates, are Flatiron School, App Academy, and the Recurse Center. I’m sure there are other good ones, but I only personally know graduates of these programs.

Recurse Center is not a bootcamp

You’re right, but it fits in the mold of “nontraditional education” so I opted to include it.

I do know a handful of people who attended RC with minimal to zero prior programming skills, though this is definitely not the norm.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#710

Post by freeone3000 » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 1:23 PM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #630

devoutsalsa wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was massively broke for a long time, and I can speak to my experience in the USA. I was over 200K USD in debt at one point. [1] I was behind on everything, and then declared bankruptcy. The only time I would have needed to worry about it was if I wanted to get a securities license (e.g. become a financial advisor), or if I needed a security clearance (e.g. work on top secret project). The real risk I faced was the…

> Just 5 years ago I was making 6000 USD per month and with almost 250K in debt, and ~50% I really don’t know what it’s like in other places, but the first few years of a mortgage are like this, but with a larger debt. It’s grim.

Except your mortgage is secured by an asset, the sale of which removes most, or all, of the debt. It's a desperate option, but it's there, no bankruptcy needed. Medical debt and unsecured debt have no such option -- and student loans can't be discharged even in bankruptcy. It's not the same situation.